1.
This group project and the subsequent exploration of the way social media, particularly Youtube and its autoplay feature, opened my eyes deepened my understanding on the way disabled individuals are treated and integrated within society. This process highlighted how the structural nature of digital inaccessibility is perpetuated through the current climate. Rather than framing attention deficit and dopamine-seeking as individual failings, our discussions revealed how platform algorithms exploit neurodivergent users, creating engagement loops that disregard access needs.
Autoplay, for example, enforces a rhythm of consumption that disregards agency, making rest or disengagement more difficult, especially for users with executive function challenges. Through this project my team and I were able to expand and shape our understanding of accessibility, not only through design but also through advocating and understanding our peers’ needs. Moving forward, I aim to take this experience as part of my practice and continue to be mindful and take into account accessibility as I continue my work and expand my knowledge.
2.
Harris, T. (2016) ‘How technology hijacks people’s minds’, Medium. Available at: https://medium.com/thrive-global/how-technology-hijacks-peoples-minds-from-a-magician-and-google-s-design-ethicist-56d62ef5edf3df3
In his 2016 article, Tristan Harris explains how tech companies take advantage of psychological vulnerabilities to capture individual’s attention. Using systematic tactics like social validation and variable rewards, these social media platforms manipulate users into maximizing engagement at any cost. Harris advocates for ethical design that puts the user’s well-being over the need for profit. In the context of my project, his article exposes a way in which autoplay is especially designed to dictate participation and erode agency from the user, as it assumes what the user should see next and does not give them time to decide. This enforced continuity mirrors exploitative work rhythms, where relentless momentum overrides individual pacing and consent. Additionally, this algorithmic flow disregards individuals with disabilities or who are neurodivergent, as they may be more vulnerable to seeking entertainment or being confined to a sedentary lifestyle which means they are more likely to fall within autoplay capitalism.
Newport, C. (2019) Digital minimalism: Choosing a focused life in a noisy world. New York: Portfolio.
Within his 2019 book Digital minimalism: Choosing a focused life in a noisy world, Cal Newport argues for digital minimalism, a philosophy that advocates intentional technology use to reclaim focus and autonomy. He critiques the addictive nature of digital tools and proposes strategies like tech sabbaticals and solitude to foster deeper engagement with life. Newport’s call for intentional disconnection challenges the imposed temporal structures of digital engagement. By resisting the compulsive cycles of notifications and autoplay, digital minimalism disrupts the relentless pacing that diminishes agency and enforces participation. By introducing deliberate pauses between videos, the plugin forces users to make conscious decisions about their viewing, rather than being passively drawn into the next recommendation. This intervention embodies Newport’s argument that reclaiming attention requires active resistance against persuasive design. Breaking the rhythm of endless consumption, the plugin acts as a digital minimalist tool, empowering users to engage with content on their own terms rather than those dictated by platform algorithms.
Zhou, M. (2016) Fragmented time. Available at: https://www.behance.net/gallery/45820185/Fragmented-Time
In her 2016 Graduation Show piece Fragmented Time, Zhou represents the ease with which technology can whisk users away, immersing them in an endless cycle of distraction. The piece visually simulates how individuals fall into the digital rabbit hole, losing track of time as they are pulled deeper into fragmented, nonlinear engagement. Through her use of visual design, Zhou illustrates how digital spaces fracture attention, disrupting a person’s ability to focus and maintain intentional interaction with content. By capturing the overwhelming and disorienting nature of digital consumption, Fragmented Time highlights how technological structures dictate user behavior, often without their conscious awareness.
Zhou’s work directly influenced the design of our plugin, which aims to combat the same experience of overwhelming digital engagement by preventing users from binge-watching YouTube videos. Just as Fragmented Time exposes the chaotic and compulsive nature of digital consumption, our plugin intervenes by breaking the cycle of autoplay and endless recommendations. Inspired by Zhou’s representation of distraction, we sought to create a tool that restores user agency, forcing deliberate engagement rather than passive absorption. By interrupting YouTube’s seamless flow of content, the plugin replicates Zhou’s critique in an interactive form, transforming her visual exploration into a functional digital intervention.
Song, Yehwan (2024) ‘(Whose) World (How) Wide Web’, Instagram. Available at: https://www.instagram.com/p/C2X0OJIrwNH/?igsh=QkFmeF92WWNBaw%3D%3D&img_index=1
Yehwan Song critiques the standardized structures of the web, questioning who controls digital spaces and how users navigate them. Through experimental web design, Song disrupts conventional interfaces, highlighting the hidden constraints that shape online experiences. Song’s work exposes how digital platforms dictate engagement patterns, limiting user agency. By resisting uniformity, it challenges the imposed temporal and spatial structures that enforce passive consumption and uninterrupted participation. This project utilizes the digital landscape to express its intended messaging, which inspired our project’s direction, to engage the internet as a medium of communication. It created a visual language for us to better understand how we wanted to express our perception of autoplay and the digital medium. Song’s experimental approach to digital design helped us conceptualize a visual and functional language for our intervention. By disrupting autoplay’s seamless flow, our plugin mirrors Song’s critique of passive digital consumption, transforming it into an active choice.
Gerbaudo, P. (2012) ‘Introduction’ Tweets and the Streets. London: Pluto Press. Available at: https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ual/reader.action?docID=3386687&ppg=1g=1
In the introduction for his book Tweets and the Streets (2012) Paolo Gerbaudo examines the role of social media within contemporary activism, arguing that platforms like Twitter and Facebook dictate collective action. While enabling mobilization and community these digital tools also shape and pace the direction of movements, constraining what the individuals interacting with the platforms can do. By extension, Youtube, which is a social media, also imposes temporal structures and directions, prioritizing virality and algorithmic urgency in order to dictate engagement. The rapid, fleeting nature of online movements mirrors broader societal rhythms that demand constant participation, often at the cost of sustained organizing and reflection upon the behaviour and media that is being consumed. This felt especially relevant to our project as we felt that the autoplay feature exists as a form of determining the pace of the users’ engagement with the work, choreographing the way the platform is to be used and engaged with.
McLuhan, M., Fiore, Q. (1967) The Medium is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects, Berkeley: Gingko Press. Available at: https://archive.org/details/pdfy-vNiFct6b-L5ucJEa
In their 1967 book The Medium is the Massage: An inventory of Effects Marshall McLuhan and Quentin Fiore argue that the medium itself shapes human perception and society more than the content that is delivered. They explore how media alter sensory experiences and social structures, emphasizing that technological environments dictate how people think, act, and interact. McLuhan’s insights highlight how media impose temporal structures that govern attention and behavior. This text was also important in our research regarding our project, as we found that autoplay develops itself as almost a medium of expression, as the individual is being exposed to information through the algorithmic stream of videos. The rhythmic flow of digital content, from autoplay to infinite scroll, enforces patterns of passive consumption, shaping participation in ways often unnoticed. This also is expressed through the use of pop-ups in our work, the pop-ups become the medium and therefore the message is also within it.